Hong Kong’s High Court is expected to rule on a judicial review case in September involving a government development proposal to build 12,000 public flats on part of the city’s oldest golf course.
The Hong Kong Golf Club filed a legal challenge in July last year in an attempt to overturn an environmental impact assessment report that would have paved the way for a public housing project on 9.5 hectares (23.5 acres) of the 172-hectare course in Fanling.
The court earlier ordered a temporary halt to any decisions arising from the report until the judicial challenge was resolved.
After hearing submissions on Tuesday, the court adjourned the case until September 11 or before.
Representing the club, Senior Counsel Benjamin Yu Yuk-hoi said the Environmental Protection Department had failed to maintain fairness and omitted “a very material assessment” in the impact assessment report during the public consultation phase.
He argued the department’s decision in May 2023 to conditionally approve the report might constitute ultra vires, or “beyond the powers”, and procedural unfairness.
In May last year, the director of environmental protection gave conditional approval to the ecological assessment by the Civil Engineering and Development Department regarding constructing the flats.
At the time, environmental officials said the approval would depend on whether the department could revise its layout plan to preserve about 0.4 hectares of woodland as practicably as possible and minimise the impact on tree preservation, the landscape and visual aspects arising from the proposal.
The Town Planning Board temporarily rezoned the 9.5-hectare site from “residential” to “undetermined” use two months later.
The club questioned whether the Environmental Protection Department had exceeded its authority and failed to consult the public properly and later filed a judicial review to overturn the decision.
In granting leave for the review, Mr Justice Russell Coleman said at the time the proposed development might pose a “real risk of serious, potentially irreversible damage to the environment of the site”.
During the hearing, the club argued the Environmental Protection Department had approved the assessment without consulting the public again and after the engineering and development department submitted supplementary information to environmental officials.
Senior Counsel Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung, representing the director of environmental protection, said on Monday that authorities had completed the public consultation and approved the impact assessment report according to procedures stipulated by law.
But Yu argued the move meant those who had “the urge to respond to the additional information were basically ignored” by the Environmental Protection Department.
Yu also pointed out what he called a “huge discrepancy” in the surveys done by the development department and the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department regarding the number of bat and moth species found on the golf course.
The former’s survey found far fewer than the latter, but the wildlife authorities’ findings were not included in the assessment report, he added.